A Coffee Tour of Copenhagen

More often than not, I come back to London from my weekend trips abroad in need of a good cup of coffee. We are spoilt for choice in this city, but unfortunately in most of Continental Europe the quality of coffee is still quite low.

That was definitely not the case in Copenhagen, in fact my 3-day trip there was planned around visits to coffee shops! :)

The first stop for coffee lovers in Copenhagen should be The Coffee Collective: they have three shops in the city, so I dedicated a whole post about them.

All around Copenhagen you will see branches of Riccos Kaffebar. This wasn’t on my list, but I walked past the Nørrebro coffee bar on my first morning, the sight of La Marzocco machine and fresh croissants was enough to make me go in.

The café looks really nice inside and I enjoyed having breakfast there. The coffee wasn’t bad, thought it doesn’t stand the competition with the nearby Coffee Collective on Jægersborggade. The butter croissants were delicious, but I found that that’s generally the case in Copenhagen.

Democratic Coffee Bar was our next stop on the tour!

Democratic Coffee Bar is in the city centre, not far from Nørreport Station, located inside Copenhagen’s main library Hovedbibliotetek. It’s not unusual to find students working on their laptops, with piles of books stacked on the table.

The shop is formed by one long room: floor-to-ceiling windows on one side (with a table top running alongside it) and wood paneled bar on the other. Opened in 2011, it serves coffee from Swedish roasters Koppi and has a simple interior design that is very Scandinavian (wood, black and white colours…Eames chairs…). This style is complemented perfectly by the brand’s cool logo.

Not far from Democratic Coffee bar and Coffee Collective Torvehallerne, there’s Kent Kaffe Laboratorium. Not many people outside Copenhagen seem to know about it, but it turned out to be my favourite café in the city!

It was my last stop in Copenhagen before heading to the airport; on a warm Monday afternoon the café was empty (everyone was either at work or in the park, I suppose) which was great for me, so I could have a chat with the owner, Eric!

As soon as you step into Kent Kaffe, it is clear this is a place made by someone who is passionate about good coffee. The espresso machine is almost out of the way at the back. The centre of attention is the brew bar: you can have single origin coffee brewed in different ways from a V60 to a Syphon, from a Chemex to an Aeropress.

On the menu when I visited there were “Fazenda Jacaranda” from Brazil and “Finca Ceylan” from Guatemala, both roasted in-house. The menu changes regularly, while for milk-based coffees they use their own Espresso blend of three different Latin American beans.

Everything about Kent Kaffe conveys passion for coffee and attention to detail, which is why I enjoyed it so much. I also loved the space: a large room with simple oak wood furniture and white walls with a mural of red coffee cherries. Another room can be found at the back. Despite being a few steps below street level, the coffee shop is brightly lit with natural light coming from the side windows.

Mine was a short visit, but I know Kent Kaffe will be my first stop next time I go to Copenhagen!

And that’s a wrap, this is the last one of my Copenhagen posts.  I hope you have enjoyed reading my travel tips, as much as I enjoyed writing them and reminiscing my beautiful trip to the Danish capital.